Judicial
and Legal Luminaries
A
list of "Judges and Officers of the Superior Court from 1711
to the Present Time," by Charles J. Hoadley, is in American
Law Reports, Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors 53(1928):593.
All Connecticut Supreme Court judges from 1784 to 1894 are sketched
by Simeon E. Baldwin on pages 41 to 95 of The Supreme Court
of the States-Provinces of North America, edited by Clark
Bell, vol. I, series 5, published also as a supplement to the
Medico-Legal Journal (1895). The publication has pictures
of many of the judges. For lawyers, the quickest way to get a
list of Connecticut Superior and Supreme Court judges since 1711,
when the court was established, is to consult the introduction
to West's Connecticut Digest, vol. 1. The official Connecticut
Reports prints obituary notices of lawyers and judges, and
an index of the notices can be found in Connecticut Bar Journal
6(0ctober, 1932)4. The journal Case and Comment published
scores of short biographies of lawyers and judges, including
many from Connecticut. They are scattered throughout issues since
the late nineteenth century. The Green Bag published in
Brookline, Mass. between 1889 and 1914—sub-tided "An Entertaining
Magazine of the Law"—also published numerous sketches of
legal figures. There is an index volume compiled by Frank E.
Chipman
(Brookline: Riverdale Press, 1920). Great American Lawyers:
The Lives and Influence of Judges and Lawyers... A History of
The Legal Profession in America, edited by William Draper
Lewis, 8 vols. (Philadelphia: John C. Wilson, 1907), includes
three essays by Simeon E. Baldwin: on Roger Sherman Baldwin, III:491-527;
James Could, II:453-57; and Zephaniah Swift, II:458-87; and one
by Frank G. Cook on Oliver Ellsworth, I:305-54. In the Connecticut
Bar Journal series, "Biographies of Connecticut Judges," are
Simeon
Baldwin, by Kenneth Wynne. 2(January, 1946)1:48-55.
Simeon
E. Baldwin, by Frederick L. Perry. 22(March, 1948)1:39-52.
Clark
Bissell, by Edward J. Quinlan. 21(0ctober, 1947)4:345-54.
David
Daggett, by Samuel A. Galpin. 20(July, 1946)3:233-41.
Layfayette
Sabin Foster, by William Shields. 20(0ctober, 1946)4:309-21.
John
S. Gilson, by James E. Wheeler. 21 (January, 1947) 1:89-95.
Stephen
Titus Hosmer, by Charles M. Lyman. 20(April, 1946)2:129-44.
William Samuel Johnson, by Charles M. Lyman. 22(September, 1948)3:252-61.
Ephraim Kirby, by Samuel H. Fisher. 21(July, 1947)3:230-37.
Tapping Reeve, by Samuel H. Fisher. 19(0ctober, 1945)4:245-58.
Zephaniah Swift, by Patric B. O'Sullivan. 19(July, 1945)3:180-94.
John Trumbull, by Victor M. Gordon. 21 (December, 1947)5:467-79.
Thomas Scott Williams, by Frank Chapman. 21 (April, 1947)2:162-67.
Roger Wolcott, anon. 36(September, 1962)3:395-417.
In "Some
Reminiscences of The New Haven Bar," Yale Law
Journal l(June, 1892)6:235-44, Frederick J. Kingsbury remembers
back to 1842 and describes Nathan Smith, Baldwin, Daggett, and
Elizur Goodrich in their old age. He also remembers the leaders
of the bar at that time: Ralph and Charles Ingersoll, Dennis Kimberly,
and Roger S. Baldwin. There is a brief sketch of James Phelps
in Connecticut Magazine 6(March-April, 1900)3:178-80 and
of Augustus H. Fenn, by Joseph H. Vaill, in Connecticut Quarterly
4( 1898)2:197-200.
The
best work of all, however, when it comes to sketches of Connecticut
lawyers of the past is Dwight Loomis and J. Gilbert Calhoun, The
Judicial and Civil History of Connecticut (Boston: Boston
History Company, 1895), which includes biographies of well over
a thousand lawyers practicing in Connecticut in the nineteenth
century. Most county histories and some town histories have chapters
called "Bench and Bar," or something like that. One
collection, published by itself, is David S. Boardman, Sketches
of the Early Lights of the Litchfield Bar (Litchfield, Conn.:
J. Humphrey, Jr., 1860).
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